How to Measure Marketing Attribution: A Step-By-Step Guide

You're a marketing director at a B2B SaaS company, staring at your analytics dashboard late on a Thursday evening. Your team ran 47 campaigns across LinkedIn, email, and virtual events last quarter.

The board meeting is next week and you need to explain which of these actually drove the $2.3M in new enterprise deals.

But there’s a problem – your current attribution setup is telling you that a single PDF download somehow influenced 80% of your closed-won revenue.

You know that's not right. Your sales cycle spans 6-9 months with an average of 14 touchpoints, but you're stuck with last-touch attribution because that's what your marketing automation system defaulted to three years ago.

Fact is, setting up and measuring attribution in B2B marketing is tough. But don’t worry – this guide will show you how to fix and set up a working model before it sabotages another quarter.

What Is Marketing Attribution?

Marketing attribution is the process of determining which marketing touchpoints and channels contribute to generating leads, opportunities, and closed deals in a business-to-business setting.

It connects marketing activities to revenue outcomes by tracking and analyzing how potential customers interact with your company across multiple touchpoints before they make a purchase decision.

Each interaction - whether it's downloading a whitepaper, attending a webinar, interacting with social posts, or clicking through an email campaign – plays a role in a conversion. And marketing attribution helps you understand which of these pieces were the most impactful.

The main trait of B2B marketing attribution is its focus on measuring impact throughout an extended buyer's journey, rather than just the final conversion point.

This way, marketing teams can understand which combinations of channels and content most effectively move prospects through each stage of the sales funnel.

Popular Marketing Attribution Models to Consider

Companies use different attribution models to assign credit to different touchpoints in the customer journey. These models can be categorized into single-touch and multi-touch attribution models. Let’s take a closer look at both:

Single-touch attribution models

Single-touch attribution models distribute all of the conversion credit to one specific touchpoint (first-click interaction) in the customer journey.

While simple to implement, these models often oversimplify complex B2B buying cycles by ignoring the impact of multiple interactions across different channels and time periods.

We can divide single-touch models into:

• First-touch attribution: This model gives full credit to the very first interaction a prospect has with your brand. So, if a potential customer first discovers your company through a LinkedIn post, and then goes through multiple touch points before converting six months later, the LinkedIn post gets 100% of the credit.
• Last-touch attribution: Last-touch attribution assigns all credit to the last click, in other words, the interaction that happened before conversion. If a prospect engages with your brand through numerous channels but then converts after downloading a whitepaper, the whitepaper gets full credit.

Multi-touch attribution models

Multi-touch attribution models assign credit to several touchpoints across the buyer journey. Some standard multi-touch attribution models include:

Linear Attribution

Linear attribution distributes credit equally across all interactions in the sales journey.

For example, if a prospect interacts with your brand through five different touchpoints before converting, each interaction receives 20% of the credit, regardless of its timing or impact on the final decision.

Time-Decay Model

Time-decay attribution gives more credit to interactions that are nearer to the conversion point, with the impact of earlier touchpoints gradually diminishing over time.

This model assumes that recent interactions have a stronger influence on the buying decision, which makes it particularly relevant for B2B companies with longer sales cycles where recent engagements often carry more weight.

Position-Based Attribution

Position-based attribution gives more credit to the first and last touchpoints in the customer journey, with less credit assigned to the touchpoints in between.

Let’s say that a customer interacts with a company through a social media ad (first touchpoint), a blog post (second touchpoint), and an email campaign (third touchpoint) before making a purchase.

With position-based attribution, the social ad and the email campaign would receive the most credit, while the blog post would receive less.

U-Shaped Attribution

U-shaped attribution assigns 40% credit each to the first and last interactions, with the remaining 20% distributed among middle interactions.

This model is similar to position-based, but the middle touchpoints receive equal credit instead of less.

W-Shaped Attribution

W-shaped attribution distributes credit across three key conversion points – first interaction (20%), lead creation (20%), and opportunity creation (20%). 

The remaining 40% is spread across other touchpoints.

Custom Attribution

Custom attribution models provide a highly tailored approach to measuring marketing effectiveness by allowing marketers to assign credit for conversions based on their unique understanding of their customer journey and the relative influence of various touchpoints. 

Unlike pre-defined models, custom attribution enables the weighting of specific channels or interactions, acknowledging that certain touchpoints may have a disproportionate impact on driving conversions. 

For instance, a business with a strong webinar program might allocate a greater percentage of credit to webinar interactions, recognizing their significant role in lead nurturing and conversion.

How to Measure Marketing Attribution: 8 Key Steps

While measuring marketing attribution may seem daunting at first, breaking it down into manageable steps makes the process more approachable.

Here's a walkthrough of how to build and implement an attribution model that works for your organization:

1. Capture All Relevant Data

Start by mapping your entire customer journey and outline every possible interaction point – from the first point of awareness through post-purchase engagement.

This means you should pay attention to both online touchpoints (website visits, email interactions, social media engagement, content downloads) and offline activities (trade shows, sales calls, direct mail campaigns).

Also, make sure to use tracking mechanisms using tools like UTM parameters, custom URL parameters, and cookie tracking to capture these digital interactions.

For offline touchpoints, you need clear protocols for manual data entry in your CRM. 

You should pay special attention to account-level engagement and connect individual contact activities to their parent accounts.

Your primary data points should include:

• Source/medium of interaction
• Timestamp and duration
• Content or asset engaged with
• Account and contact information
• Interaction type and depth of engagement

2. Connect Every Touchpoint

The first step is to set up a consistent identification system across channels – whether through marketing automation platforms, CRM systems, or customer data platforms (CDPs).

This system should maintain persistent tracking of both individual contacts and their associated accounts.

Next, take a look at your tech stack integration. Your CRM should sync seamlessly with your marketing automation platform, while your website analytics should feed into your overall attribution system.

Pay particular attention to tracking "dark funnel" activities – those touchpoints that often go untracked, like content shares or offline referrals.

The main connection points should include:

• Cross-device user identification
• Account-to-contact relationship mapping
• Channel-to-conversion pathways
• Multi-touch engagement sequences
• Sales team interactions and touchpoints

PRO TIP 💡: HockeyStack easily integrates with your key platforms, so you can consolidate data from various sources into one unified dashboard. This approach provides a comprehensive view of the customer journey and you can forget about manual data reconciliation.

3. Use a Cohort Method to Determine ROI

Cohort analysis provides a more accurate picture of marketing ROI and groups customers based on shared characteristics or time periods.

Instead of looking at marketing performance in isolation, analyze how different groups of accounts move through your marketing funnel over time. This helps isolate the true impact of specific marketing activities and provides more reliable attribution insights.

You should track cohorts based on key variables such as first engagement date, industry segment, or initial marketing channel.

Also, focus on metrics and KPIs that matter most for B2B:

• Time-to-conversion by cohort
• Average deal size within cohorts
• Channel effectiveness across similar accounts
• Campaign performance for specific segments
• Long-term value patterns by acquisition source

4. Unify Offline Attribution

Create a systematic approach to capture and integrate offline interactions – from sales meetings and phone calls to industry events and direct mail campaigns.

You’ll need a standardized process to log offline engagements in your CRM, complete with specific interaction types and engagement scores.

A best practice is to use unique identifiers or QR codes in printed materials and event collateral to bridge the offline-online gap.

PRO TIP 💡: With HockeyStack’s powerful multi-touch attribution features, you can track and analyze data from both online and offline interactions seamlessly. It centralizes all touchpoints in a single platform, minimizing the risk of manual tracking errors and ensuring accurate insights.

5. Track B2B Account-Based Attribution

Focus on mapping the collective journey of buying teams by aggregating all touchpoints from multiple stakeholders within target accounts. 

This is one of the best ways to see how your marketing efforts influence decision-making at the account level.

Set up your attribution system to consolidate interactions from all contacts within an account, weighted by their roles and influence levels.

This includes tracking both explicit engagements and implicit signals of interest.

PRO TIP 💡: With HockeyStack’s Deal Insights, you can track buying committee actions and intent signals, prioritize deals based on engagement, and identify high-priority accounts—all to accelerate your sales process and boost close rates.

6. Choose the Right Attribution Model

Selecting an attribution model isn't a one-size-fits-all decision – it should align with your specific business model, sales cycle, and marketing objectives.

Consider starting with a simpler model like position-based attribution to establish baseline insights, and then move toward more sophisticated approaches as your data maturity increases.

For complex B2B sales, multi-touch models often tend to prove more valuable than single-touch attribution.

B2B companies should evaluate their attribution model choice based on:

• Average sales cycle length
• Number of typical touchpoints
• Sales process complexity
• Data collection capabilities
• Resource availability for analysis
• Reporting requirements

7. Use Marketing Analytics and Attribution Tools

Select tools that seamlessly integrate with your existing systems, such as CRMs, marketing automation platforms, ad platforms, and web analytics.

Basic tools like Google Analytics can provide foundational insights, while more specialized platforms like HockeyStack excel in multi-touch attribution and account-based marketing analytics.

HockeyStack's B2B-focused approach addresses common challenges that traditional analytics tools often miss.

And its ability to track lengthy sales cycles (often 6-18 months in B2B) and attribute revenue across multiple stakeholders within the same account makes it particularly valuable for complex B2B campaigns.

8. Experiment and Iterate

Attribution modeling should be treated as an evolving process rather than a one-time implementation.

Start with a baseline model, and then continuously refine your approach based on real-world data and business outcomes.

Each company should have a systematic process for testing different attribution approaches and measuring their impact on decision-making.

A good idea is to review and adjust your model every quarter and consider factors such as:

• Changes in customer journey patterns
• New channel performance data
• Changes in buying committee behavior
• Sales cycle variations
• Marketing campaign success
• Data quality and completeness

How HockeyStack Makes Marketing Attribution Measurement Easier

HockeyStack is a comprehensive marketing analytics platform built specifically for B2B companies that want to better understand their complex customer journeys.

Here’s exactly how HockeyStack can help:

Unifying Data from Multiple Sources to Provide a Full-Funnel Overview

Bring Your Marketing Data Under One Roof

HockeyStack acts as your central command center and integrates data from every corner of your marketing ecosystem.

Instead of bouncing between dashboards and spreadsheets, you'll see the complete picture of your customer's journey in one place.

You get a bridge between your website analytics, CRM records, email campaigns, social media efforts, and ad performance.

When a lead moves from reading your blog to downloading a whitepaper, then engaging with your emails before finally booking a demo – HockeyStack tracks that entire path.

No more guessing which touchpoints made the difference or manually piecing together customer journeys from different platforms.

You can finally answer questions like "What's really driving our enterprise sales?" or "Which marketing channels deserve more budget?" with confidence.

Case Study 📝: Whatfix used HockeyStack's effortless integration to seamlessly connect their website with sales tools like Salesforce, Pardot, and Drift—all without requiring developer assistance. This setup allowed their content team to automate tracking for “first-touch” content opportunities and gain deeper insights into content touchpoints impacting the sales pipeline. With HockeyStack, Whatfix doubled their content-influenced opportunities and achieved a 32% increase in closed deals. [Read Full Case Study]

Monitor Every Customer Touchpoint with Accuracy

HockeyStack's granular website analytics feature offers more than just basic website visits and shows you the complete story of how prospects become customers.

Companies can monitor everything from their first blog read to their latest product demo, including email interactions, social media engagement, and content downloads.

Whether they're watching your webinars, clicking through newsletters, or exploring pricing pages, you'll understand exactly how different touchpoints work together to drive conversions – all without drowning in data or losing sight of the big picture.

Turn Every Form Submission Into Actionable Intelligence

Instead of just collecting responses, HockeyStack helps you understand the story behind each form submission.

When someone fills out your contact form, downloads a resource, or completes a survey, you'll see how they found you, what content they engaged with before converting, and what motivated their action.

You can connect each response to its broader context. 

• Did they read three blog posts before requesting a demo? 
• Have they been opening your newsletter for months? 
• Were they referred by a customer success story?

HockeyStack maps these behavioral patterns and outlines which content and touchpoints drive quality conversions.

Plus, by connecting survey responses with actual user behavior, you can validate what people say against what they do.

When a prospect tells you they found you through a Google search but you can see they actually clicked through from a LinkedIn ad, you can see your attribution blind spots and how people perceive their own buying journey.

Building a Complete Picture of the Customer Journey

Track Individual Users Across Sessions

HockeyStack uses a cookieless tracking system to monitor individual users across multiple sessions and devices.

With a technique called fingerprinting, it gathers various browser and device attributes—such as device type, screen dimensions, browser version, operating system, and language settings—to create a specific identifier for each user.

This enables HockeyStack to recognize returning users even if they switch browsers or devices, which provides a more accurate view of their interactions over time.

HockeyStack's tracking script is lightweight, so you don’t have to worry about it affecting your website loading speeds.

Visualize the Customer Journey with Custom Dashboards and Reports

You can skip hiring data scientists and build exactly what you need with HockeyStack's no-code dashboards.

Drag and drop different visualization types – from funnel charts to heat maps – to tell your marketing story your way. 

Companies can organize reports into easily digestible pages for quick analysis of trends, campaign performance, and user behavior.

Whether you're tracking campaign ROI or analyzing user behavior patterns, you can quickly arrange and customize reports that make sense for your team's specific needs and/or business goals.

Spot Churn Signals Before It's Too Late

HockeyStack can spot the early warning signs that are hidden in your customer data to prevent churn.

You can track behavior patterns across every touchpoint – from declining product usage to changes in support interactions – to spot customers at risk before they leave.

Instead of reacting to cancellations, you'll see the full story behind customer disengagement, including which features they stopped using, how their engagement changed, and where friction points are.

Revenue Attribution to Connect Specific Actions to Their Impact on the Bottom Line

Measure the ROI of Your Content Marketing, SEO, and Paid Ads Efforts

Marketers can use HockeyStack to measure the true impact of their content, SEO, and paid ads funnels with detailed attribution data for every initiative.

For content marketing, HockeyStack tracks engagement across different types of content, such as blog posts, ebooks, white papers, webinars, and case studies.

It attributes conversions directly to specific content pieces, so you can determine which formats, topics, or campaigns resonate most with your audience and contribute to leads and revenue.

For example, you might discover that case studies are driving late-stage conversions, so your team will know to prioritize more customer success stories.

Through organic traffic tracking, HockeyStack connects website visitors from search engines to specific conversions, so you get a clear picture of your SEO performance. 

For instance, you can analyze how a newly optimized page or improved metadata improves both organic traffic and downstream conversions.

You can even use content marketing and SEO dashboards from our template library to keep an eye on what’s happening. 

One example is Gaetano DiNardi's Blog Vitals Dashboard which can measure your blog's direct impact on revenue generation. 

You can see which blog posts contribute to revenue, track blog entrances that lead to demo bookings, and organize self-reported attributions mentioning the blog, so content teams can demonstrate the tangible value of their efforts. 

With these insights, you can focus on content that drives revenue, optimize distribution, and secure buy-in to scale your content marketing and SEO activities.

When it comes to Google Ads, HockeyStack seamlessly links clicks to conversions and provides a granular understanding of how paid campaigns contribute to your bottom line. 

Companies can see which keywords, ads, or audiences deliver the highest ROI. Or, you can check if that specific industry term is worth the investment and if your remarketing campaigns are driving enterprise deals.

Track Customer Value from First Touch to Lifetime Revenue

HockeyStack reveals which marketing channels and campaigns attract your most valuable long-term customers.

Instead of just measuring initial conversion costs, you’ll see how different acquisition sources impact customer lifetime value.

Whether a lead comes through organic search, social media, or paid ads, you'll understand their full revenue potential and buying patterns. 

This helps you focus your budget on campaigns that don't just drive quick wins, but build lasting and profitable customer relationships.

Granular Attribution Analysis and Modeling to Find Out What Drives Results

Provides a Range of Attribution Models

HockeyStack puts you in control of how you measure marketing impact with flexible attribution modeling.

Whether you need first-touch insights to optimize awareness campaigns, or multi-touch attribution to understand complex B2B journeys, you can switch between models to match your goals.

You can also compare different attribution views to understand how each marketing touchpoint contributes to revenue.

Customizable Models for More Granular Insights

HockeyStack lets you build custom models that reflect how your customers actually buy. 

Companies can give extra weight to demo requests if they're your strongest conversion signal, or adjust time windows to match your typical sales cycle.

Want product trials to count more than blog visits? Need to account for seasonal buying patterns? Or maybe your enterprise deals need different attribution rules than your SMB segment?

HockeyStack's custom modeling puts you in control, so you can measure marketing performance in a way that makes sense for your business, not someone else's playbook.

Analyzes User Segments

With cohort analysis, HockeyStack helps you slice your audience data to find hidden patterns and opportunities.

You can track how different user segments – whether grouped by channel, behavior, or demographics – move through your funnel and impact revenue.

Maybe enterprise leads from LinkedIn need different nurturing than SMB prospects from Google Ads. Or perhaps European customers follow a completely different journey than your North American audience.

HockeyStack's segmentation tools show these crucial differences, so you can fine-tune your marketing strategy for each specific audience and maximize ROI across every segment.

AI Modeling for Predictive Intelligence

HockeyStack's advanced AI modeling suite combines machine learning with your marketing data to forecast campaign outcomes and optimize channel performance.

The platform analyzes complex attribution patterns to predict:

• Which leads are most likely to convert
• Which channels will drive the highest ROI
• How different marketing touchpoints will contribute to revenue

These predictive insights help you make data-driven decisions about budget planning and campaign optimization before deployment, rather than relying solely on historical performance metrics.

Measure True Campaign Impact with Lift Analysis

HockeyStack's lift analysis shows you the real difference your marketing campaigns make – no complex experiments needed.

You can automatically compare groups who encountered your campaign against those who didn't, so you'll see exactly how much each initiative moves the needle.

To see if that new email sequence or ad campaign actually drove results, you can get clear data on incremental improvements in engagement, conversions, and revenue.

Track these lift metrics across channels to see which marketing tactics deliver genuine business impact versus correlation-based assumptions.

ABM Tools for Account-Level Insights

Focus Your Efforts on Revenue-Driving Accounts

HockeyStack's targeted account lists help you spot your most promising opportunities before they even reach out.

Companies can analyze engagement patterns, firmographic data, and behavioral signals across marketing channels, so you'll know which accounts deserve more attention.

Whether they're downloading multiple resources, regularly visiting pricing pages, or showing signs of buying intent, HockeyStack helps you prioritize your marketing and sales resources on the accounts most likely to become valuable customers.

Deal Insights for Better Sales Intelligence

HockeyStack's Deal Insights reveals the complete picture of how buying committees engage with your brand.

Track each stakeholder's journey – from the IT director downloading technical specs to the CFO reviewing pricing pages. 

When you monitor these engagement patterns, you'll understand which accounts are getting closer to conversion and which need more nurturing.

You’ll see when multiple decision-makers from the same company start engaging with your content, spot which resources resonate with different roles, and capture the perfect moment for sales outreach.

ABM/ABX Tools for Targeted Campaigns at High-Value Accounts

HockeyStack’s ABM/ABX tools let you create highly targeted campaigns tailored specifically for your highest-value accounts.

You can leverage intent data to identify key accounts and build custom audience lists that sync seamlessly with your CRM for streamlined engagement across channels.

The platform enables you to run display ads, track detailed engagement metrics, and instantly see each account’s interactions, so your team measures campaign performance with precision.

This synchronized approach ensures your messaging stays consistent and relevant across channels – whether you're warming up new target accounts or accelerating engaged opportunities.

Analysis and Optimization Features

Instantly See What Areas Should be Optimized

HockeyStack’s attribution data provides clear insights into the performance of your marketing activities, so you can easily spot underperforming channels, campaigns, or content.

Organizations can analyze which touchpoints fail to drive engagement or conversions, find gaps in their strategy, and take targeted actions to address them.

For instance, if a specific campaign generates traffic but low conversions, you can refine messaging, adjust targeting, or distribute the budget elsewhere.

Case Study 📝: Cognism leveraged HockeyStack to get a clear, data-backed understanding of their marketing performance. By tracking multiple touchpoints throughout the customer journey, they gained precise insights into the revenue impact of each marketing interaction. With flexible attribution models, they evaluated channels and campaigns based on real performance metrics. Using HockeyStack, Cognism achieved a 5x return on ad spend and boosted their overall ROI by 25%. [Read Full Case Study]

HockeyStack – #1 Modern Attribution Platform for B2B Marketers

HockeyStack simplifies marketing attribution with a powerful, all-in-one platform that captures and analyzes every touchpoint in your customer journey.

Instead of juggling multiple tools and wrestling with fragmented data, you get a centralized command center that delivers real-time insights into your marketing performance and revenue drivers.

With advanced attribution modeling and AI-powered analytics, HockeyStack transforms complex customer journeys into clear, actionable intelligence.

This means you can finally move from basic tracking and understand which marketing efforts drive results—and more importantly, why they work.

With HockeyStack, you can:

• Track every customer interaction across your marketing ecosystem, from first touch to final conversion, with granular precision.
• Connect all your marketing activities directly to revenue impact and ROI, so it’s easy to justify and optimize your marketing spend.
• Transform complex data into clear, actionable insights that help you make better marketing decisions and improve campaign performance.
• Build custom dashboards and reports without any technical expertise using an intuitive drag-and-drop interface.
• Unify all your marketing data in one place, from website analytics and CRM to email campaigns and social media performance.
• Monitor individual users across multiple sessions and devices with advanced cookieless tracking technology.
• Create custom attribution models that match your specific sales cycle and business requirements.
• Leverage AI-powered predictions to optimize your marketing spend and campaign performance before deployment.

Don't let complex B2B customer journeys cloud your marketing decisions.

HockeyStack provides the clarity and insights you need to optimize your marketing strategy and maximize revenue across all channels.

Book a demo with HockeyStack today and see how easy attribution can be when you have the right tools by your side.

FAQs

Why is correct marketing attribution so important for B2B companies?

• Optimize marketing spend: Understand which channels and campaigns deliver the best ROI, so you can distribute your budget more effectively. This helps eliminate wasteful spending and you can double down on what's actually driving results.
• Improve campaign performance: Outline which content, messages, and touchpoints resonate most with your target audience throughout their buying journey.
• Gain deeper customer insights: You’ll understand how different customer segments interact with your marketing efforts and what drives them to convert.
• Make data-driven decisions: Replace gut feelings with concrete data about which marketing activities actually drive revenue. You can base your strategic decisions on real performance metrics rather than assumptions.
• Justify marketing investments: You’ll be able to demonstrate the clear link between marketing activities and revenue generation to stakeholders.
• Accelerate revenue growth: Find and scale your most effective marketing channels while quickly adjusting (or eliminating) underperforming activities to drive faster revenue growth.

How can businesses leverage data analytics and AI in attribution for better insights?

• Data-driven attribution: Use machine learning algorithms to analyze thousands of customer journeys and instantly determine the true impact of each touchpoint. This removes human bias from attribution modeling and provides more accurate insights.  
• Predictive analytics: Forecast future campaign performance and see which leads are most likely to convert based on historical patterns and behavioral data.
• Customer segmentation: AI can also spot meaningful patterns in customer behavior and automatically group prospects into distinct segments based on their interactions.
• Personalized recommendations: Use AI to recommend relevant content and offers to customers based on their individual needs and preferences.

What are the most common mistakes in measuring marketing attribution?

• Relying solely on last-click attribution: Giving all the credit to the final touchpoint ignores the major role of earlier interactions in the buyer's journey. This oversimplified approach can lead to undervaluing important awareness and consideration phase activities.
• Not tracking all relevant touchpoints: Missing key interactions, especially offline touchpoints like sales calls or events, creates blind spots in your attribution model.
• Poor data quality and integration: Working with inconsistent, duplicate, or siloed data across different platforms also compromises the accuracy of your attribution modeling. Without clean, unified data, even the most sophisticated attribution model will produce unreliable results.
• Not reviewing and refining the attribution model: Treating attribution as a "set it and forget it" process rather than continuously testing your model based on new data and changing business conditions.
• Ignoring the sales cycle length: Applying attribution windows that are too short for your typical B2B sales cycle means missing important early-stage interactions.

What are the key metrics for measuring marketing attribution?

• Revenue generated: Tracks how different channels and campaigns contribute to your bottom line through direct and influenced revenue.
• Return on investment (ROI): Compares the cost of your marketing initiatives against the revenue they generate to determine their efficiency.
• Customer lifetime value (CLTV): Look beyond initial conversion value to understand the long-term revenue potential of customers acquired through different channels.  
• Conversion rates: Monitors how effectively your funnel converts prospects at each stage, from initial awareness to final purchase.
• Cost per acquisition (CPA): Calculates how much you're spending to acquire customers through different channels and campaigns. This metric, when combined with CLTV, helps determine the true profitability of your marketing efforts.
• Customer engagement: Track key interaction metrics like website visits, content downloads, and email engagement to understand how prospects engage with your brand.

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